


they shape themselves and go

by Crazyamoeba



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: Cults, Death, Everything Hurts, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Injury, Nothing explicit, but it's sympathy for the devil(s), warnings for general cult and far cry 5 issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 20:05:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14838323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crazyamoeba/pseuds/Crazyamoeba
Summary: The Deputy never imagined that Jacob Seed was capable of Love.But then, it appears that John Seed never imagined that Jacob would die before him.





	they shape themselves and go

 

 

Before Jacob Seed stops breathing, there are a few moments of almost-there silence.

 

Even the sounds of a stubbornly thriving ecosystem seemed to quiet, to calm and settle when his breaths – only slightly more wet and rasping than usual – started to even out.

 

And then, like the sound the earth might make at the end of a very long day, there is sound.

 

So loud and terribly alive, so utterly overwhelming that, for the first time in what counts for time in this place, the Deputy feels afraid. So keen and sharp, it is as if someone has found the tiniest of holes in his heart and is whispering the deepest and murkiest of fears into its core, and letting the icy sludge that follows flow deep into every part of his body.

 

The sounds are guttural and torn, shredded on their way out of the chest that made them. Loud and wordless save for what may once have been a name.

 

And now as John Seed throws himself – literally and bodily – down at his brother's feet like a supplicant, a Child and Brother both, they become lipless, near formless expressions.

Sounds that ached to have the chance of still being beseeching, but which furiously, hopelessly grow into lamentation.

 

Quiet and gasping, like the agonal breaths of one already gone from the world, the sounds mark the Deputy more clearly and deeply than John's blades or needles ever could.

 

It seeped through his mouth and nose, coating his insides.

 

“No, no, no – Jacob.” Juddering, repeated denials as his hands clench both of Jacob's arms so hard they forced another of his limited, precious breaths from him.

 

“Jacob – Jacob, no.” The words are too loud for a deathbead – wild and uncontrolled, screeching into the air with nothing other than the certainty that this Is Not Meant To Be.

 

John's words begin to fall together, collapse in upon themselves like prayers from tattered pages.

 

One of Jacob's hands reaches out to settle on John's head, and both of John's come to grip the forearm with white-knuckle terror, before jolting out of their daze, ripping clumsily at his belt and bringing his radio to his shining, trembling lips.

 

“For fuck's sake, bring the medics – bring the Father!” The screaming fell into the frantically-chattering radio like an ember in an ocean. The suffocating sound of an all-consuming, hysterical rage that knew it wouldn't be enough.

 

“Bring the Father! I will open up every single one of you and drag your sins from your guts-”

 

Horror banked, dampened instantly by a large hand cupping his face. A thumb stroking beneath his eye.

 

“Shh. It's alright, John.” Wet and quiet from cracked lips. More depth of love than the Deputy ever thought could have survived inside the wasteland of Jacob Seed.

 

And yet John surges upward, gripping Jacob's face, eyes wide and mouth desperately open, as if hoping to open every part of himself that he could. Hoping perhaps to absorb all of Jacob's love, all of Jacob, as he surely knew that these few moments would now have to last him a lifetime.

 

“You're Strong, John. So Strong.” The words are tired and fond and certain, and his lips purse and his brow furrows on an affectionate smile as he shushes his brother's minute, angry head-shaking.

  
“Yes. You are. You were small when we left you, Johnny. You were alone for a long time.”

 

An open wound of a sound spills from between John's teeth, and his left hand flails as if he's falling, fisting desperately in Jacob's shirt.

 

“Shut up,” he hisses, spit landing to mix with Jacob's blood. “Shut up or I'll fucking gut you myself.”

 

Jacob laughs softly, Lovingly, and John's hatred burns as it steals an extra two breaths from Jacob's chest.

 

“There it is.”

 

Both of Jacob's hands encircle the wet and pallid face before him. Stilling the outside turmoil. Tilting it upwards to behold. To love and to cherish, a benediction for one left behind.

 

“I know you were alone for a long time, John. Too young to understand much of anything when we left, maybe.”

 

John's silence is precarious and painful, dancing on a knife's edge. His whole body shakes like one who is ready and willing to fly apart at the seams.

 

Fly apart and up, up, into the sky. Far away from this moment because every good boy knows that if you closed your eyes, if you didn't see it, it never happened.

 

“And at the end of it all, there you were, waiting for us when we we could finally come to you. Because you understood what Joseph and I never did. You believed what we never hoped to.”

 

“Shut. Up.” A warning and a plea, warbled out on a breath just as painful as the ones Jacob pulled from the air. John savagely twisted the material of his brother's shirt, pulled his head down level to his own. “I hate you.”

 

_Don't say it, don't finish it. If you say it, it's real. If you open your eyes, it's already happened._

 

“We'll Meet Again. You were too young to know why. And I don't believe you ever really figured out the where or the when. But you always knew that. The strongest of us all, hmm?”

 

Jacob's other hand is at the back of John's head, stroking calmly as if anything could ever soothe this moment away. As if anything could ever be enough. A bandaid on a gut-shot, and after everything, it was all Jacob Seed had to offer the one he had sworn to protect.

 

“No!”

 

The word echoed and bounced from the peaks of every mountain. Clanged around the whole county like a futile Commandment.

 

“You don't have that right. You don't leave here. You leave when I say you leave!”

 

Hubris. Arrogance before the gods. Jacob smiles, small and rueful, and it makes the Deputy ache.

 

John furiously rams his head into Jacob's chest, headbutts him like a stubborn goat. Mashes his face angrily into Jacob's neck while Jacob only wraps his arms around his brother's head. Allows it all to happen.

 

Allows John a moment to grunt and twitch helplessly where he is pressed into his wounded, seeping side. To wail his Commandments into Jacob's neck in the hopes that they would find an opening there through which to infiltrate, to bolster and to revive.

 

Born again, and again, and again.

 

Eventually, perhaps sensing that the day wasn't the only thing running short, Jacob urged John's head up.

 

“You're Strong, John. And Joseph will love you, protect you. And he'll make dignified sermons and he'll mourn me with pretty fucking words. But he's going to need you, John.”

 

Jacob is blinking rapidly, body trying to clear his vision, mind knowing the impossibility of the task. He grips John's head tighter.

 

“He's going to need you because he's not just the Father. He's Joe. And _Joe's_ going to need you.”

 

John groans like he's the one dying, tries to turn away from Jacob's unfocused gaze, tries to shake his head because anything is worth a shot. Anything is worth trying over the horrifying nothing that threatens to take Jacob's place.

 

Jacob gently strokes John's head, still cradled in his palms. Jostles it when John still won't look at him.

 

“You hear me, Johnny? He's going to need your Strength. I'm going to need it.”

 

John chokes on air, his mouth open in a silent, darkened lesion. Struggling to drag air in and out through the wave of what once might have been a twisted, deformed laughter.

 

The sound that eventually escapes is like breaking metal. Sharp and screeching, it is ugly and metallic like blood in the mouth, because what in the fuck will Jacob Seed need from his brother, or indeed the world, in a few short moments?

 

The same thought appears to have lodged in John's throat, as he gags, sagging and moaning in Jacob's hold like a child throwing a tantrum.

 

“I'm going to need it from you,” for the first time, Jacob's voice is familiar to the Deputy, as there is a sliver of the old steel creeping in. He readjusts his grip on John, forces him to sit up.

 

“I'm going to need it from you, _for_ you. I need to know you're not going to try to follow me where you shouldn't.”

 

Jacob's eyes are unbearably soft, and John howls, low and furious, at the request.

 

“John. Don't let this take over.”

 

Jacob brushes his fingers gently over his brother's chest, over the _Sloth_ that sleeps there.

 

“Or this, hm?”

 

Fingers curling around John's _Wrathful_ arm, squeezing gently.

 

“I don't want to see you past those Gates too soon, John.”

 

There are a few false, stuttering starts where words seem to die on John's lips, just short of finding life and purpose.

 

When they eventually come, they are so quiet that the Deputy almost takes a step forward.

 

“We were supposed to march there _together.”_ The words seep into the air, sluggish and high and wounded, and for a moment the Deputy's gaze falls to John's shuddering body, convinced that there must be some horrendous, bleeding opening inflicted there.

 

But all he could see kneeling on the mountain was a boy, complaining at the unfairness of it all, and the Deputy has to fight to remember all the lives the Seeds have decimated with their scorched earth policy.

 

Has to fight not to take a step forward and beg forgiveness.

 

“I know, John.” Jacob's voice is low and quiet, breathed into John's hair.

 

“We've only just found you.” His voice is thin and reedy, high-pitched like a young boy tugging imploringly at a shirt sleeve. “We haven't had enough _time._ It doesn't even-”

 

The sobbing is short-lived but insistent when it takes over, ripping the sounds from John's shuddering body as Jacob begins to lean more heavily against him.

 

The extra weight seems to rouse John, to panic him. He shoves Jacob, hard. Ignores the grunt that falls from his lips.

 

“I hate you. I was alone because of _you._ This is _your fault.”_ The Deputy desperately wants to go to John, to take his hands and shush him. Breathe into his hair and tell him that now is not the time, that this categorically will not work.

 

Explain to the man that has probably killed just as many as he has Saved, that death is not a sleep that people can be roused from, if only you make them angry enough.

 

“You burnt the barn, _brother_. You _chose_ to _leave_ us, and then you _promised_ that we'd meet again. You _failed,_ Jacob. And now that we're together, instead of making it Right, you choose to leave again?” John is struggling to hold on to the anger, fighting to keep it shrouded around him and not let the horror lurking below the surface of his voice to break free.

 

“I will _never_ forgive you if you leave, Jacob.”

 

Jacob's eyelids are heavy, but his hands are gentle, if a little uncoordinated, when they pull John back towards him.

 

Soft and kind and everything Jacob Seed never was to the rest of the world, when he slowly bends and rests his lips against John's forehead.

 

“It's alright, John.”

 

There is a moment of almost-silence while Jacob's rattling breathing begins to quietly hitch.

 

And this time, John chooses to helplessly absorb the lie as he kneels at his brother's feet. Hoping, perhaps, that if he was very still and very quiet, he could absorb everything else that Jacob had to offer. Perhaps even provide a home to a soul soon to be searching for one.

 

It took only a few short minutes that for once felt exactly as small as they were. And in the end, it would have been very easy to miss the moment when the sound of one man's struggling, aching breath replaced another's.

 


End file.
